Spherical audiovisual media is typically recorded using either a special rig of multiple cameras/microphones. Alternatively, spherical audiovisual media can be recorded using a dedicated camera that contains multiple camera lenses embedded into the device, and filming overlapping angles simultaneously. Through a method known as video stitching, separate footage can be merged together into spherical audiovisual media. The color and contrast of each frame can be calibrated for consistency with adjacent frames that are stitched together. This stitching process may be performed by the camera itself, or using specialized video editing software that can analyze common visuals and audio to synchronize and link the different camera feeds together.
Spherical audiovisual media can be formatted in various types of projections, e.g., equirectangular, cubic, polygonal, etc. The spherical audiovisual media can be either monoscopic, with one image directed to both eyes, or stereoscopic, viewed as two distinct images directed individually to each eye for a 3D effect, thereby enabling the perception of depth.
Spherical audiovisual media are typically viewed via personal computers, mobile devices such as smartphones, or dedicated head-mounted displays. Users can pan around the video by using touch control, e.g., clicking and dragging, or by using the sensors of a device. For example, on smartphones, internal sensors such as the gyroscope are used to pan the video based on the orientation of the device. Taking advantage of this behavior, stereoscope-style enclosures for smartphones can be used to view spherical audiovisual media in an immersive format similar to virtual reality. The phone display is viewed through lenses contained within the enclosure, as opposed to virtual reality headsets that contain their own dedicated displays. Additionally, unlike spherical audiovisual media, virtual reality affords the user with the ability to control their position relative to the virtual scene, as well as panning the view. With spherical audiovisual media, the location is fixed to the camera, thus the panning is limited to the camera angles recorded.